Matched
by MayBell422
Summary: Lucy has always trusted the Society's choices. And when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Lucy is certain he is the one... until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now she is faced with an impossible choice: Between the only life she's known and the path no one dares follow... between perfection and passion.
1. Chapter 1

**Okay so this is a Nalu story. It is not my work but the work of the author Ally Condie. She wrote the "Matched" series and I am simply copying her work with different characters. Again I DO NOT own this story, it is completely Ally Condie's work with different characters for the interest of NaLu fans. Please don't report it, it's simply for NaLu fans to read and enjoy. ONE last time NOT MINE! This is Ally Condie's story completely!**

 **Disclaimer: I do not owwn Fairy Tail OR the Matched series!**

 **Please enjoy the creative imagination of Ally Condie. :) She is the author of this entire thing! I only replaced the characters for Fairy Tail characters. Her books are titled Matched, Crossed, and Reached. Please enjoy. :)**

 **P.S. It starts out not NaLu... but yeah it will turn into Nalu... eventually :) SO don't worry.**

* * *

N _ow that I've found a way to fly, which direction should go into the night? My wings aren't white or feathered; they're green, made of silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move- first in a circle, then a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn't worry me; neither do the stars ahead._

I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I saw a painting of them once. White wings, blue sky, gold circles above there heads, eyes turned up in surprise as though they couldn't believe what the artist had painted them doing, couldn't believe their feet didn't touch the ground.

Those stories weren't true. I know that. But tonight, it's easy to forget. The air train glides through the starry night so smoothly and my heart pounds so quickly that it feels as though I could soar into the sky at any moment.

"What are you smiling at?" Gray wonders as I smooth out the folds of my green silken dress down neat.

"Everything," I tell him, and it's true. I've waited so long for this: for my Match Banquet. Where I'll see, for the first time, the face of the boy that will be my Match. It will be the first time I hear his name.

I can't wait. As quickly as the air train moves, it still isn't fast enough. It hushes through the night, its sound a background for the low rain of our parents' voices, the lightning-quick beats of my heart.

Perhaps Gray can hear my heart pounding, too, because he asks, "Are you nervous?" In the seat next to him, Gray's older brother begins to tell my mother the story of his Match Banquet. It won't be long now until Gray and I have our own stories to tell.

"No," I say. But Gray's my best friend. He knows me to well.

"You lie," He teases. "You _are_ nervous."

"Aren't you?"

"Not me. I'm ready." He says it without hesitation, and I believe him. Gray is the kind of person who is sure about what he wants.

"It doesn't matter if you're nervous, Lucy," he says gently. "Almost ninety-three percent of those attending the Match Banquet exhibit some signs of nervousness."

"Did you seriously memorize _all_ of the official Matching material?"

"Almost," Gray says with a smirk. He holds his hands out as if to say, _What did you expect?_

The gesture makes me laugh, and besides, I memorized all of the material, too. It's easy to do when you read it so many times, when decision is so important. "So you're in the minority." I say. "The seven percent who don't show nerves at all."

"Of course," He agrees.

"How could you tell _I_ was nervous?"

"Because you keep fiddling with _that_." Gray points to the golden object in my hands. "I didn't know you had an artifact." A few treasures from the past float around among us. Though citizens of the Society are allowed to have one Artifact each, they are hard to come by. Unless you had ancestors who took care to pass things along through the years.

"I didn't, until a few hours ago." I tell him. "Grandfather gave it to me for my birthday. It belonged to his mother."

"What's it called?" Gray asks.

"A compact," I say. I like the name ver much. Compact means small. I am small. I also like the way it sounds when you say it: _com-pact_. Saying the word makes a sound like the one the artifact itself makes when it snaps shut.

"What do the initials and numbers mean?"

"I'm not sure." I run my finger across the letters _ACM_ and the numbers _1940_ carved across the golden surface. "But look," I tell him, popping the compact open to show him the inside: a little mirror, made of real glass, and a small hollow where the original owner once stored powder for her face, according to Grandfather. Now, I use it to hold the three emergency tablets that everyone carries- one green, one blue, one red.

"That's convenient," Gray says. He stretches out his arms in front of him and I notice he has an artifact, too- a pair of shiny platinum cuff links. "My father lent me these, but you can't put anything in them. They're completely useless."

"They look nice, though." My gaze travels up to Gray's face. to his ice blue eyes and raven hair above his dark suit and white shirt. He's always been handsome, even when we were little, but I've never seen him dressed up like this. Boys don't have as much leeway in choosing clothes as girls do. One suit looks much like another. Still, they get to select the color of their shirts and cravats, and the quality of the material is much finer than the material used in plainclothes.

" _You_ look nice." The girl who finds out that he's her match will be thrilled.

"Nice?" Gray asks, lifting his eyebrows. "That's all?"

"Gray," his mother says next to him, amusement mingled with reproach in her voice.

" _You_ look beautiful," Gray tells me, and I flush a little even though I've known Gray all my life. I _feel_ beautiful in this dress: ice green, floating, full-skirted. The dress clings to me perfectly, emphasizing my curves. the unaccustomed smoothness of the silk against my skin makes me feel lithe and graceful.

Next to me, my mother and father each draw a breath as City Hall comes into view, lit up white and blue and sparkling with the special occasion lights that indicate a celebration is taking place. I can't see the marble stairs in front of the Hall yet, but I know that they will be polished and shining. All my life I have waited to walk up those clean marble steps and through the doors of the Hall, a building I have seen from a distance but never entered.

I want to open the compact and check in the mirror to make sure I look my best. But I don't want to seem vain, so I sneak a glance at my face in its surface instead.

The rounded lid of the compact distorts my features a little, but it's still me. My brown eyes. My crown-gold hair, which looks even more golden in the compact than it does in real life. My small curved nose. My chin with a trace of a dimple like my grandfather's. All the outward characteristics that make me Lucy Heartfillia, seventeen years old exactly.

I turn the compact over in my hands, looking at how perfectly the two sides fit together. My Match is already coming together just as neatly, beginning with the fact that I am hear tonight. Since my birthday falls on the fifteenth, the day the Banquet is held each month, I'd always _hoped_ that I mightier Matched on my actual birthday- but I knew it might not happen. You can be called up for your Banquet anytime during the year after you turn seventeen. When the notification came across the port two weeks ago that I would, indeed, be Matched on the day of my birthday, I could almost hear the clean _snap_ of the pieces fitting into place, exactly as I've dreamed for so long.

Because although I haven't even had to wait a full day for my Match, in some ways I have waited all my life.

"Lucy," my mother says, smiling at me. I blink and look up, startled. My parents stand up, ready to disembark. Gray stands, too, and straightens his sleeves. I hear him take a deep breath, and I smile to myself. Maybe he is a little nervous after all.

"Here we go," he says to me. His smile is so kind and good; I'm glad we were called up the same month. We've shared so much of childhood, it seems we should share the end of it, too.

I smile back at him and give him the best greeting we have in the Society. "I wish you optimal results," I tell him.

"You to Lucy," he says.

As we step off the air train and walk toward City Hall, my parents each link an arm through mine. I am surrounded, as I always have been, by their love.

It is only the three of us tonight. My brother, Romeo, can't come to the Match Banquet because he is under seventeen, to young to attend. The first one you attend is always your own. I, however will be able to attend Romeo's banquet because I am the older sibling. I smile to myself wondering what Romeo's Match will be like. In seven years, I'll find out.

But tonight is _my_ night.

 **oOo**

It's easy to identify those of us being Matched; not only are we younger than all the others, but we also float along in beautiful dresses and tailored suits while our parents and other siblings walk around in plainclothes, a background against which we bloom. The City Officials smile proudly at us, and my heart swells as we enter the Rotunda.  
(A Rotunda is a large round room:)

In addition to Gray, who waves good-bye to me as he crosses the room to his seating area, I see another girl I know named Lisanna. She picked the bright red dress. It was a good choice for her, because she is beautiful enough that standing out works her favor. She looks worried, however, and she keeps twisting her artifact, a jeweled red bracelet. I am a little surprised to see Liana here. I would have picked her for a Single.

"Look at this china," my father says as we find our place at the Banquet tables. "It reminds me of the Wedgwood pieces we found last year..."

My mother looks at me and rolls her eyes in amusement. Even at the Match Banquet, my father can't stop himself from noticing these things. My father spends months working in old neighborhoods that are being restored and turned into new Boroughs for public use. He sifts through the relics of a society that is not as far in the past as it seems. Right now, for example, he is working on a particularly interesting Restoration project: an old library. He sorts out the things the Society has marked as valuable from things that are not.

But then I have to laugh because my mother can't help but comment on the flowers, since they fall into _her_ area of expertise as an Arboretum worker. "Oh, Lucy! Look at the centerpieces. Lilies." She squeezes my hand.

"Please be seated," an Official tells us from the podium. "Dinner is about to be served."

It's almost comical how quickly we all take our seats. Because we might admire the china and flowers, and we might be here for our Matches, but we also can't wait to taste the food.

"They say this dinner is always wasted on the Matches," a jovial-looking man sitting across from us says, smiling around our table. "So excited they can't eat a bite." And it's true; one of the girls sitting farther down the table, wearing a pink dress, stares at her plate, touching nothing.

I don't seem to have this problem, however. Though I don't gorge myself, I can eat some of everything- the roasted vegetables, the savory meat, the crisp greens, and creamy cheese. The warm light bread. The meal seems like a dance, as though this is a ball as well as a banquet. The waiters slide the plates in front of us with graceful hands; the food, wearing herbs and garnishes, is as dressed up as we are. We lift the white napkins, the silver forks, the shining crystal goblets as if in time to music.

My father smiles happily as a server sets a piece of chocolate cake with fresh cream before him at the end of the meal. _"_ _Wonderful,"_ he whispers, so softly that only my mother and I can hear him.

My mother laughs a little at him, teasing him, and he reaches for her hand.

I understand his enthusiasm when I take a bite of the cake, which was rich but not overwhelming, deep and dark and flavorful. It is the best this I have eaten since traditional dinner at Winter Holiday, months ago. I wish Romeo could have some cake, and for a minute I think about saving some of mine for him. But there is no way to take it back to him. It wouldn't fit in my compact. It would be bad form to hide it away in my mother's purse even if she would agree, and she won't. My mother doesn't break the rules.

I can't save it for later. It's now, or never.

I've just popped the last bite into my mouth when the announcer says, "We are ready to announce the Matches."

I swallow in surprise, and for a second, I feel an unexpected surge of anger: I didn't get to savor my last bite of cake.

 **oOo**

"Lisanna Strauss."

Lisanna twists her bracelet furiously as she stands, waiting to see the face of her Match flash on the screen. She is careful to hold her hands low, though, so that the boy seeing her in another City Hall somewhere will only see the beautiful white haired girl and not her worried hands, twisting and turning that bracelet.

It's strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.

There is a system, of course, to the Matching. In City Halls across the country, all filled with people, the Matches are announced in alphabetical order backwards, according to the girls' last names. (You know Z-A?) I feel slightly sorry for the boys, who have no idea when their names will be called, when they must stand for girls in other City Halls to receive them as Matches. Since my last name is Heartfillia, I will be somewhere at the end of the middle. The beginning of the end.

The screen flashes with the face of a boy with bluish-black hair and an odd human shaped birthmark on his face, but still very attractive. He smiles as he sees Lisanna's face on the screen, and she smiles as well. "Bickslow Soul," the announcer says. "Lisanna Strauss. you have been matched with Bickslow Soul."

The hostess presiding over the Banquet brings Lisanna a small silver box; the same thing happens with Bickslow on the screen. When Lisanna sits down, she looks at the silver box longingly, as though she wishes she could open it right away. I don't blame her. Inside the box is a microcard with background information about her Match. We all receive them. Later, the boxes will be used to hold the rings for the Marriage Contract.

The screen flashes back to the default picture: a boy and a girl, smiling at each other, with glimmering lights and a white-coated Official in the background. Although the Society times the Matching to be as efficient as possible, there are still moments when the screen goes back to this picture, which means we all wait while something happen somewhere else. It's so complicated- the Matching- and I'm again reminded of the intricate steps of the dances they used to do long ago. This dance, however, is one that the Society alone can choreograph now.

The picture shimmers away.

The announcer calls another name; another girl stands up.

Soon, more and more people at the Banquet have little silver boxes. Some people set them on the white tablecloths in front of them, but most hold the boxes carefully, unwilling to let their futures out of their hands so soon after receiving them.

I don't see any other girls wearing the green dress. I don't mind. I like the idea that, for one night, I don't look like everyone else.

I wait, holding my compact in one hand and my mother's hand in the other. Her palm feels sweaty. For the first time, I realize that she and my father are nervous, too.

"Lucy Heartfillia."

It's my turn.

I stand up slowly, letting go of my mother's hand, and turn toward the screen. I feel my heart pounding and I am tempted to twist my hands the way Lisanna did, but I hold perfectly still with my chin up and my eyes on the screen. I watch and wait, determined that the girl my Match will see on the screen in his City Hall somewhere out there in the Society will be poised and calm and lovely, the very best image of Lucy Heartfillia that I can present.

But nothing happens.

I stand and look at the screen, and, as the seconds go by, it is all I can do to stay still, all I can do to keep smiling.

Whispers start around me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother move her hand as if to take mine again, but then she pulls it back.

A girl in a green dress stands waiting, her heart pounding.

Me.

The screen is dark, and it stays dark.

That can only mean one thing.

* * *

 **Yay, cliffhangers are the best! Please R &R if you want more! Please go check out the author Allie Condie 'cause she is one of my favorites, besides James Dasher.**

 **I love you all and I PROMISE NaLu will happen eventually! TTFN! TaTa For Now! 3,181 words! EEK!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi everyone! Here is chapter two of Matched. Like literally, I will be following Allie Condie's book to the word! If you enjoy this story, go review her book(which is also titles Matched, of course)**

Sorry I took so long in posting this. Never got around to writing.

 **Please enjoy! NaLu will come! Maybe... tehehe.**

* * *

The whispers rise soft around me like birds beating their wings under the dome of City Hall. "Your Match is here this evening," the hostess says, smiling. The people around me smile as well, and their murmurs become louder. Our Society is so vast, our Cities so many, that the odds of your perfect Match being someone in your own City are minuscule. It's been many a year since such a thing has happened here.

These thoughts tumble in my mind, and I close my eyes briefly as I realize what this means, not in abstract, but for me, the girl in the green dress. _I might know my Match._ He might be someone who goes to the same Second School that I do, someone I see every day, someone-

"Gray Fullbuster."

At his table,Gray stands up. A sea of watching faces and white tablecloths, of glinting crystal glasses and shining silver boxes stretches between us.

I can't believe it.

This is a dream. People turn their eyes on me and on the handsome boy in the dark suit and blue cravat. It doesn't feel real until Gray smiles at me. I think, _I know that smile_ , and suddenly I'm smiling, too, and the rush of applause and smell of the lilies fully convince me that this is actually happening. Dreams don't smell or sound as strong as this. I break protocol a bit to give Gray a tiny wave, and his smile widens.

The hostess says, "You may take your seats." She sounds glad that we are so happy; of course, we should be. We _are_ each others best Match, after all.

When she brings me the silver box, I hold it carefully, even though I already know much of what's inside. Not only do Gray and I go to the same Second School, we also live on the same street; we've been best friends for as long as I can remember. I don't need the microcars to show me a picture of Gray as a child, because I have plenty of them in my mind. I don't need to download his favorites list to memorize, because I already know what they are.

 _Favorite Color:_ Ice Blue

 _Favorite Leisure Activity:_ Swimming

 _Favorite Recreation Activity:_ Games **(I would have written Sculpting for FLA, but it would go against the plot, and Gruvia so... lol)**

 _"Congratulations Lucy,"_ my father whispers to me, his expression relieved. My mother says nothing, but beams with delight and embraces me tightly. Behind her, another girl stands up, watching the screen.

The man sitting next to my father whispers, "What a piece of luck for your family, you don't have to trust her future to someone you know next to nothing about."

I'm surprised by the unhappy edge in his tone; the way his comment seems to be right on the verge of insubordination. His daughter, the nervous one wearing the pink dress, hears it, too; she looks uncomfortable and shifts slightly in her seat. I don't recognize her. She must go to one of the other Second Schools in our City.

I sneak another glance at Gray, but there are to many people blocking my view and I can't see him. Other girls take their turns standing up. The screen lights up for each of them. No one else has a dark screen. I was the only one.

 **oOo**

Before we leave, the hostess of the Match Banquet asked Gray and I and our families to step aside and speak with her.

"This is am unusual situation," she says, but she corrects herself immediately. "Not unusual. Excuse me. It is merely uncommon." She smiles at both of us. "Since you already know each other, things will proceed differently for you. You will know much of the initial information about each other." She gestures towards our silver boxes. "There are a few new courtship guidelines included on your mircrocards, so you should familiarize yourselves with those when you have an opportunity."

"We'll read them tonight," Gray promises sincerely. I try yo keep from rolling my eyes in amusement because he sounds exactly the way he does when our teacher gives him a learning assignment. He'll read the new guidelines and memorize them, as he read and memorized the official Matching material. And then I flush again, as a paragraph from that material flashes across my mind:

 _If you choose to be Matched, your Marriage Contract will take place when you are twenty-one. Studies have shown that the fertility of both men and women peaks at the age of twenty-four. The Matching System has been constructed to allow those who Match to have their children near this age- providing for the highest likelihood of healthy offspring._

Gray and I will share a marriage contract. _We will have children together._

I don't have to spend the next few years learning everything about him because i already know him, almost as well as I know myself.

The tiny feeling of loss deep within my heart surprises me. My peers will spend the next few days swooning over pictures of their Matches, bragging about them during meal hour at school, waiting for more and more bits of information to be revealed. Anticipating their first meeting, their second meeting, and so on. That mystery does;t exist for Gray and I. I won't wonder what he is like or daydream about our first meeting. But then Gray looks at me.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Just that we are very lucky," I answer, and I mean it. There is still much to discover. Until now, I have only known Gray as a friend. Now he is my Match.

The hostess corrects me gently. "Not lucky, Lucy. There is no luck in the Society."

I nod. _Of course_. I should know better than to use such an archaic, inaccurate term. There's only probability now. How likely something is to occur, or how unlikely. Even if I was names after the word.

The hostess speaks again. "It has been a busy evening. and it's getting late. You can read the courtship guidelines later, another day. There's plenty of time."

She's right. That's what the Society has given us: time. We live longer and better than any other citizens in the history of the world. And it's thanks in large part to the Matching System, which produces physically and emotionally healthier offspring.

And I'm a part of it all.

My parents and the Carrows can't stop fawning over how wonderful this all is, and as we walk down the steps of City Hall together, Gray leans over to me and say, "You'd think they'd arranged everything themselves."

"I can't believe it," I say, and I feel opulent and a little giddy. I can't believe that this is me, wearing a stunning green dress, holding gold in one hand and silver in the other, walking next to my best friend. My Match.

"I can," Gray teases. "In fact, I knew all along. That's why _I_ wasn't nervous."

I tease him back. "I knew, too. That's why I _was._ "We're laughing so much that when the air train pulls up neither of us notice for a moment, and then there _is_ a brief moment of awkwardness as Gray holds out his hand to help me climb aboard.

"Here," He says, his voice serious. For a moment, I don't know what to do. There is something new in touching each other now, and my hands are Gray wraps his hand around mine, pulling me onto the train with him.

"Thank you," I say as the doors close behind us.

"Any time," he says. He does not let go of my hand; the little silver box I hold creates a barrier between us even as another one breaks. We have not held hands since we were children. In doing that tonight, we move across an invisible divide that separates friendship from something more. I feel a tingle along my arm; to be touched, by my Match, is a luxury that the other Matches at the Banquets tonight do not share.

The air train carries us away from the sparkling, icy-white lights of City Hall toward the softer yellow porch lights and streetlights of the Boroughs. As the streets flash past on our way home to Sakuratree Borough, I glance over at Gray. The black of the night sky is similar to the color of his hair, and his face is handsome and confident and good. And familiar, for the most part. If you've always known how to look at someone, it;s strange when that directive changes, Gray has always been someone I could not have, and I have been the same for him.

Now everything is different.

 **oOo**

My ten-year-old brother, Romeo, waits for us on the front porch. When we tell him about the Banquet, he can't believe the news.

"You're Matched with _Gray?_ I already know the person you're going to marry? That's so strange."

"You're the one who's strange." I tease him, and he dodges me as I go to grab him. "Who knows. Maybe your Match lives right on this street, too. Maybe it's-"

Romeo covers his ears. "Don't say it. Don't say it-"

"Serena," I say, and he turns away pretending that he didn't hear me. Serena lives next door. She and Romeo torment each other incessantly.

"Lucy," my mother says disapprovingly, glancing around to make sure no one heard. We are not supposed to disparage **(regard or represent as being of little worth)** other members of our street or our community. Sakuratree Borough is known for being tight-knit and exemplary in this way. _No thanks to Romeo,_ I think yo myself.

"I'm teasing, Mama." I know she can't stay mad at me. Not on the night of my Match Banquet, when she has been reminded of how quickly I'm growing up.

"Come inside," my father says. "It's almost curfew. We can talk about everything tomorrow."

"Was there cake?" Romeo asks as my father opens the door. They all look back at me, waiting.

I don't move. I don't want to go inside yet.

If I do, that means the night is coming to and end, and I don't want that. I don't want to take of the dress and go back to plainclothes; I don't want to return to the usual days, which are good, but nothing special like this. "I'll come in soon. Just a few minutes more."

"Don't be long," my father says gently. He doesn't want me to break curfew. It is the City's curfew, not his, and I understand.

"I won't." I promise.

I sit down on the steps of my house, careful, of course, of my borrowed dress. I glance down at the folds of the beautiful material. It doesn't belong to me, but this evening does, this time that is dark and bright and full of both the unexpected and the familiar. I look out into the new spring night and turn my face to the stars.

I don't linger outside for long because tomorrow, Saturday, is a busy day. I'll need to report to my trail work position at the sorting center early in the morning. After that, I'll have my Saturday night free-rec hours, one of the few times I get to spend with my friends outside of Second School.

And Gray will be there.

Back in my bedroom, I shake the tablets out of the little hollow in the base of the compact. Then I count- one, two, three; blue, green, red- as i slide the tablets back into their usual metal cylinder.

I know what the blue and green tablets do. I don't know anyone who knows for certain what the red tablet does. There have been rumors about it for years.

I climb into bed and push away thoughs of the red tablet. For the first time in my life, I'm allowed to dream of Gray.


End file.
